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CNN –
The tech industry sold Americans a whole range of goods and promised to change the world for the better. However, instead, she collected everyone's data to build powerful empires.
That's the message in the fascinating new memoir “Burn Book” by tech journalist Kara Swisher, host of numerous podcasts and a CNN contributor.
I wanted to get Swisher's take on how the government should go about regulating a tech industry that has gone to great lengths to avoid regulation for decades.
“There are things the U.S. government should be doing when it comes to social media but isn’t doing it,” she told me. But perhaps more importantly, there are things every country needs to work together on to limit the emergence of artificial intelligence – which has so much potential, but is also quite scary.
Below is our conversation, which was conducted over the phone and edited for clarity.
WOLF: The title of the book is “Burn Book,” which is a provocative title. What are you trying to do here?
SWISHER: It's somehow absolutely obvious. I didn't want to try to be a hidden, i.e. smart, person.
It's based on Mean Girls, which is now back in the news because, strangely enough, the movie came out around that time. It's the book you write, the one you have with your friends and the one you brand people in.
It's usually a high school thing where you burn people, you know, gossip about people and what you really think of them and what people are really like – and a lot of it is telling the truth about people says things you can't say out loud.
So that was it. But I mixed it with a technology love story because I also love technology at the same time.
WOLF: It's a funny book, and there are all these unflattering pictures about very famous people, most of them billionaires. Are you expecting a setback? Will anyone be surprised?
SWISHER: Read? I don't know. I don't think they read. They'll have their assistants sum it up and then it won't hurt so much. I don't know.
A lot of people I've had tough and good relationships with over the years – I'm thinking like a Mark Cuban – won't mind at all. I'm actually nice to him.
Over the years I've always been pretty straightforward. I don't know if it's hard or unpleasant, but (approximately) truthful. That's what I think of you, and that's what I've always told you personally. They already knew I was like that.
WOLF: They said it was a love story with technology. And you find a lot of that in the book. But it's also kind of sad because you go from being an evangelist to someone who raises the alarm.
SWISHER: I was not an evangelist. I have it covered. There were real evangelists.
I was different because I criticized back then. Most people thought, “Oh, cool, Apple, whatever they did.” I always thought, you know, like Steve Jobs, when he came out with the social network Ping, I thought, that sucks. It will not work. He didn't mind because I was right.
But I was definitely hoping it would be a permanent change, right? I wasn't stupid, I wasn't aware of the negative aspects – I study media. But I thought this was something that could really bring people together in a really meaningful way. I thought it could help education and help people understand their similarities and things like that. I was hopeful in that regard.
WOLF: So how do we go from someone who is inspired to someone who tells a scary story?
SWISHER: The first line of the book is very critical. It was capitalism, but they pretended it wasn't. They kept saying we were here to change the world. We are about community. We will bring people together. Do not be angry. It was all so performative. Like really.
And when someone says that, it's initially like a political campaign. It's like oh, wow, hope. Tomorrow in America. I'm not stupid. I think that's what politicians do to inspire people, and it was inspiring.
Everything they did then encouraged poor outcomes, whether it was teenage girls losing their self-esteem, using data without permission, or developing monopolistic tendencies.
Everything they did, I realized pretty quickly that it was all about the money. It was always just about the money.
The annoying thing is that they said it wasn't, and they insisted it wasn't. When you said, “I think it's all about the money for you,” they were offended. Or I think for certain people it's all about self-glorification, etc.
WOLF: They did it, but we also allowed it. I don't think there's been a single major regulatory law in the entire time you've been covering technology. There have been some antitrust cases, but it's not like there's been any regulation of the tech industry.
SWISHER: No, actually zero. Zero would be the number you are looking for.
They have to deal with regular regulation, but generally they have made do with Section 230 (a part of the Communications Decency Act that exempted tech platforms and websites from lawsuits related to content on their platforms).
They assume no liability for much of what they produce. And antitrust laws haven't changed enough to deal with it. In this case, that is a failure on our part, and I mean “our” more broadly – our government, our elected officials, the people we elect, and our pressure on them to do something about it.
I think we've accepted a lot of these technical things that used things that the US taxpayer paid for. And then they take our data, and then they spit it back out and charge us for it.
So it's a real bummer when you really think about it. For these people we are a cheap date. We go, oh, a dating service. Thank you very much. Or a map service. Guess who paid for all these cards? Us. Now they're doing it themselves, but they initially started using government data and things like that.
My whole premise for the whole thing was: Why do you thank people for giving you your stuff? Why do you let them take your data and act like it's theirs? That's actually what always annoyed me from the start.
At this point, of course, they are predatory capitalists, and they will do anything to get bigger. It's up to us to do something about it.
WOLF: We've had a number of social media CEOs here recently. I don't know what word you would use to describe what happened at the hearing Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta), but it was definitely embarrassing.
SWISHER: It was a long time ago. He's been up there a few times and they've tried to get him to say things. I found that incredibly moving – these parents with these pictures of their children.
00:51 – Source: CNN
'Awkward' and 'uncomfortable': Father whose son died by suicide reacts to Zuckerberg's apology
WOLF: If you were to do something now, what would regulation look like specifically for social media?
SWISHER: This isn't a new, fresh idea from me or anyone else, but there have been privacy laws, algorithmic transparency laws, and updates to antitrust laws. We could start there, right?
You could add simple things like hacker notifications, data breach notifications, all sorts of things that would hold them accountable. With AI I don’t know – guard rails. A lot of this was in the (Joe) Biden AI Executive Order, like safety reports about what you eat, what is the training data, what is the provenance?
We regulate every other industry and don't act like it's the biggest deal, right?
The example I've been using lately is Alaska Airlines. A door flew away. How many planes were grounded? 750. There are a million investigations. There are legislators who demand this. People have lost their jobs.
Countless young girls have seen their self-esteem drop significantly, which can be directly attributed to social media. There is great anger, but where exactly are people losing their jobs? You are not in technology. They don't have to pay the price for the damage they cause.
And they don't always cause harm. Let me be clear, some of this is great. But what they do to us is not a favor; It is a capitalist trade. And we need to stop treating them like saviors or magicians.
WOLF: There was a headline about a week ago that was bizarre to me when there was a big meeting in the UAE and Sam Altman, the ChatGPT guy, beamed into the meeting and essentially argued that the UAE is in the business AI could take a leading role in regulation.
SWISHER: No thanks. Let’s stick with the democratic countries.
WOLF: But does this have to be an international effort? Europe has its own laws and was far ahead of the USA.
SWISHER: I was at dinner with (US Secretary of State) Tony Blinken. I thought, “Oh, look who’s right next to me.” And he asked me about a lot of AI topics.
And I said, one thing I know: it has to be a global decision-making. It's like nuclear talks. This is a global problem. Even though many of the most important companies are based in the US, there will be resistance to this. This is one thing the whole world needs to do.
WOLF: In particular, what do you think the government should do about the spread of misinformation online?
SWISHER: It's not just the government that has to work around this. It's all of them.
The problem is that it bleeds right into the First Amendment. It's not always about the First Amendment, but it's just that people with bad intentions always try to prevent the implementation of real laws to protect people under the First Amendment. A lot of these companies do that.
They're like the First Amendment. I think you are a private company. It's not necessary for your platform to have anti-Semitic content, so don't do that.
They're like the First Amendment. I think they're not the government, but I think in their head they think they are in many ways.
What's important is that we start thinking about what we can do that has nothing to do with the First Amendment, how we understand where things come from, how we call things correct. Facebook just did that. Which of these AIs is correct? Which of these images are AI-generated and which are real images?
We can do all sorts of block and tackle to make things work. We just act like we don't have the tools to do it.
WOLF: They tell people that their best relationship is with their phone. It is the last thing you see when you go to bed and the first thing you see when you wake up. As I was reading the book, I came across some of these stories of people intentionally giving up their phones or going without the internet. My own teenage son fundamentally refuses to use a phone. Will that be a thing?
SWISHER: No, I think people love their phones.
WOLF: Well, if everyone's best relationship is with their phone, then what do we need to do in terms of couples therapy?
SWISHER: During the pandemic, I wrote a column for the (New York) Times saying that tech companies have more wealth, power and control than ever before because we must, must, use it because they are perfect for what just happened .
One area that didn't work was education. Children absolutely needed to have physical contact with each other and in the classroom. People crave real life connection. And I believe that there is a human impulse, even if you have this lizard brain that likes to stare at your phone.
Because the conversation never ends, right? There is always something to look at. Basically it's like having a casino, a slot machine in your pocket. Oh, look. I press the button. It's a pretty light. Such things.
It is designed that way. From a biological point of view, it is very difficult to fight against it. It's really. There are all sorts of studies about why you need to touch it, etc.
There is an equal and equally important part of our humanity that, unlike these things, genuinely wants to meet other people. And I think that's their concern. The problem is that many of these devices are so fascinating. It's like if you give a mouse a certain type of food and it won't stop eating until it dies.
So the question is: what can we do to divert people's attention? It needs to be enforced, like putting cell phones in bags at school. They do this at my children's school. You have to go in this direction. And you only get it at the end of the day. How to eliminate the addiction or impulse to touch her.
By the way, you can do all sorts of things with these phones. There are a million things.
We really need to start fostering more community. We have lost the church, not all of them, but there are fewer people going to church. We need to place more emphasis on gatherings and how we can bring each other together in a physical location, including the workplace. There should be a lot more intentionality in the workplace.